The miners’ strike was the outstanding event of the past
year. While the railway strike in 1911 showed the “new spirit” of the
British workers, the miners’ strike definitely marked an epoch.

Despite the “war” preparations of the ruling classes, and despite the
strenuous efforts of the bourgeoisie to crush the resistance of the
rebellious slaves of capital, the strike was a success. The miners
displayed exemplary organisation. There was not a trace of
blacklegging. Coal-mining by soldiers or inexperienced labourers was out of
the question. And after six weeks of struggle the bourgeois government of
Britain saw that the country’s entire industrial activity was coming to a
standstill and that the words of the workers’ song, “All wheels cease to
whir when thy hand wills
it”,[1] were coming true.

“The Prime Minister of the most powerful empire the world has ever
seen attended a delegate meeting of the mine-owners’ striking slaves and
pleaded with them to agree to a compromise.” That is how a well-informed
Marxist summed up the struggle.

The British Government, which year after year usually feeds its workers
with promises of reform “some day”, this time acted with real
dispatch. In five days a new law was rushed through Parliament!
This law introduced a minimum wage, i.e., regulations establishing
rates of pay below which wages cannot be reduced.

It is true that this law, like all bourgeois reforms, is a miserable
half-measure and in part a mere deception of the workers, because while
fixing the lowest rate of pay,
the employers keep their wage-slaves down all the same. Nevertheless, those
who are familiar with the British labour movement say that since the
miners’ strike the British proletariat is no longer the same. The
workers have learned to fight. They have come to see the path that
will lead them to victory. They have become aware of their strength. They
have ceased to be the meek lambs they seemed to be for so long a time to
the joy of all the defenders and extollers of wage-slavery.

In Britain a change has taken place in the balance of social forces, a
change that cannot be expressed in figures but is felt by all.

Unfortunately, there is not much progress in Party affairs in
Britain. The split between the British Socialist Party (formerly the
Social-Democratic Federation) and the In dependent (of socialism) Labour
Party persists. The opportunist conduct of the M.P.s belonging to the
latter party is giving rise, as always happens, to syndicalist
tendencies among the workers. Fortunately, these tendencies are not strong.

The British trade unions are slowly but surely turning towards
socialism, in spite of the many Labour M.P.s who stubbornly champion the
old line of liberal labour policy. But it is beyond the power of these last
of the Mohicans to retain the old line!

Notes

[1]Lenin is quoting from the workers’ song which Georg Herwegh, a German
poet, wrote in 1863 for the General Association of German Workers.